The surfacing feature is great since it allows you to run a surfacing job without the need to use your CAM software.
Another cool feature would be the ability to make a straight edge on your wood stock. So essentially, just a command to move the spindle in the x axis, the y axis, or both axes to get two perpendicular edges.
Probably easy to do with macros but it would be a nice feature to have natively.
I actually was dreaming about my Altmill and in the dream, I was using the surfacing feature with an input of 0 for the Y axis setting. So first thing I do after waking up is run to the shop and give it a try.
Well guess what? It worksā¦kinda.
You do need to use the zig-zag pattern instead of spiral. And you need to flip the cut direction for a cut in the y direction. But with a 0 value for X or Y, the spindle will run in straight line. Unfortunately, you canāt square a piece in a single operation.
I was recently thinking about this as well. I was considering getting a jointer. However, I donāt do a lot of work with hardwood that would require milling like that. Then I figured I would just use the CNC.
I was going to draw up the cuts required but yeah something like the surfacing tool would be neat.
Nic
Iāve been woodworking for 30+ years and although a jointer would have been great, I have always managed without one by using a router and/or a thickness planer. If I had the space, I likely would have gotten one.
Of course, now that I have the CNC, I likely would never need a jointer, unless I needed to decrease my production costs.
I think this is usually called a āconversational milling wizardā. I have a few of these as plugins in another Mach3 machine, and Tormach and other hobby/prosumer machines have similar. Itās basically an extremely simple GCode generator for some typical operations like ācut a circleā, āslotā, etc.
Itās not all that unlike the probing tab or similar, so something a gSender hacker could take a look at. I havenāt gotten around to getting a gSender build environment running yet, but will keep it on my list 
Weāre hoping plugins (and the example plugins that will ship with this) will cover this edge case. This is very close to our simple cam plugin available in Edge for testing.
